


Lightbringer

by Holly



Category: Murder Mysteries - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-19
Updated: 2008-02-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:27:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1631468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Holly/pseuds/Holly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucifer walked, and sometimes he walked in the Dark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lightbringer

**Author's Note:**

> Written for fleshghost

 

 

Lucifer walked, and sometimes he walked in the Dark.

It was a simple discontinuity of the City's light, he had decided at the start, and he investigated for hours the impossibly defined edge by sending his own light into the vastness and watching it devoured as it crossed the invisible border. But this could only hold his attention for so long, and eventually, dismayed to find himself trembling just a little, he stepped across the line himself. When no immediate threat appeared, he turned and looked back at the light. The City gleamed, sparkled, a pearl glowing in the void. It was even more beautiful from here, and he hadn't imagined that possible. He cautiously circled its edge and found that in the cover of the shadows he could not be seen from inside the bubble of light. As a creature of light, a _creator_ of light, it made him uncomfortable. He forced himself, therefore, to stay longer. 

It was a commonly held belief that if you kept walking past the edge of the City, you'd fall off an edge, tumbling end over end under heavy, useless wings and vanish for the rest of eternity. Lucifer believed it himself for a while, keeping the City in sight until he learned to trust his environment. Once away from its impatiently changing light, the shadows stood out sharply over sights he'd never thought to imagine. 

Vast shapes lingered at the border; many of them had something like the shape of the park's trees, as though some intelligence saw and imitated them. The 'forest' grew stranger, therefore, the more deeply inside the walker wandered.

It wasn't like anything he'd ever seen. 

\---

"It is important," Zephkiel had said, "that you set an example."

"Yes, sir," Lucifer had replied, and then wondered why he'd called Zephkiel 'sir.' He was the Captain of the Host now, but he supposed it was the presence that Zephkiel commanded. He made note of it and later took pains to emulate it. He felt, even long afterward, that it served him well.

"So, Lucifer," Zephkiel said. "You have been Named and given your function. Was there anything else?" The wingless angel was already half-turning away, picking up one of the many scrolls scattered around his cell.

Lucifer hesitated. He had a thousand questions, of course, but this was not the place to ask them. His function was not to ask, but to know. His chin came up. "The Name will ask for regular notice of your progress as a senior designer. I will be back later to check on you."

"Very good," Zephkiel said, and Lucifer could swear he was smiling a little. "I will see you later, then."

\---

_ Go further in. Set us free. _

The voice (or voices, he supposed) whispered so softly at first that he couldn't be certain he heard anything, but they grew more distinct the longer he stayed. It was maddening at first, trying to piece the broken bits of language together; he often waited and willed them to strengthen. They never spoke above a whisper, even at the end, but a whisper was enough.

Back in the City there were whispers, as well. Something had happened; an angel _Dead_ , they said, though it was a term that applied to the creation more than to themselves. But it was certainly something new, and wrong in a way that they'd never encountered. He had called out the one whose function it was to deal with such events, but still he could not put it far from his mind. His refuge was away from the questions and rumors and all those guileless shocks of responsibility. It became easier to find a few minutes' rest outside, where no one asked him impossible questions.

He was startled when he discovered that the voices were responsive to him, but once established, he asked his own questions constantly. He began with simple matters, ones with answers that made it easy to pick out a lie.

"Who is the highest angel in the order we all follow?" he asked. The lights and spires of home blinked reassuringly back at him. 

_All angels are equal in the sight of the Name_ , whispered the voice out of the Dark. _In the eyes of the others, you are the Captain of the Host_.

He walked on, unaware for a moment that he had stopped.

"How is it that Carasel has been _ended_?"

_Things end. It is a lesson all angels must learn, whether sooner or later._

Ah, so it was instructive as well as dangerous. Interesting. Lucifer walked on, and always, always, the mysterious voices walked with him.

\---

Gadriel showed him a prototype. He was very excited about it.

"What is it?" Lucifer asked, turning it over in his hands, though of course he had an idea.

"It is based on the ones that we carry, though more crude," Gadriel said. "The idea is that they will refine it, make it into something beautiful."

"And what makes you think they'll do that?"

"It should be lighter, sharper. Curved in places, perhaps. More beautiful weapons kill more efficiently."

"So they would make it more beautiful simply because it kills more efficiently."

"Death is a beautiful thing." 

There was a pause.

"Have you _seen_ it?" Lucifer asked, incredulous. Gadriel only stared at him, utterly baffled.

\---

Lucifer was working with a division of the corps, practicing maneuvers, when Raguel found him to escort him to Zephkiel's crowded cell. He found focus in straightening the corps' flight patterns and in the constant repetition. By the time he left that cell, though, all the focus he'd found had vanished. He flew unsteadily, without a clear goal, in a state of confusion and frustration that quickly built to fury. Under his skin struggled something unknown and free. He turned, unthinking, for the City's edge.

Lucifer stormed into the blackness, trailing fire that didn't penetrate more than a few feet into the Dark.

"Why do we practice?" he demanded. "Why are the angels formed into an army? What are we fighting, or defending against, or invading?"

_What are you struggling against?_ The voice sounded amused, parroting his own words back at him. _There is no one else. Only yourselves and the things you have built. A hierarchy based on the love and worship of One._

"Why Carasel and Saraquael?"

_Why not?_

He froze. "There was more to it than that. There are many angels who love others, many who would kill or die for their partner's happiness."

No response.

"Who is Zephkiel?" he tried.

_He is the one you call the Name._

Soft, so soft he could barely hear them, bells from the City rang in mourning for the lost angels.

"And he didn't lift a _hand_ to stop—" 

Lucifer turned back to look at the lights. "Something must change," he said, in a very different voice. "There will be a—" He considered many of the new words and found them lacking: rebellion, mutiny, coup.

"A revolution. Worse, if someone does not act." There was silence for a while. Lucifer closed his eyes and hunched there, alone, and contemplated every possible result of the current flow of events. All of them ended in disaster, save one. 

_And now. A question for you, son of the morning._

"Ask," he said without thinking.

_What is it that keeps you bound here?_

His eyes flew open.

"I am not _bound_ ," he snapped, knowing as he spoke that his words were not true. What, then? Loyalty? Duty? Love?

He stood abruptly, aware all at once that he had been crouching. His eyes blazed with purpose. It was ridiculous that they should work to maintain the illusion that they were free when they slaved under this forced worship, the worst kind of bondage imaginable. The people of the earth would be no different. An image came to him suddenly, of himself walking among the Creation, watching humanity making their cities over in the image of a City that they could not possibly know. It was nonsense, but it was true. It was happening. And nothing happened without a reason.

Resolute, he started back toward the lights.

He hoped that the voices would call him back, explain every detail of the Name's plan to him, somehow make it all better. But they said nothing, and Lucifer walked out of the Darkness without ever looking back. 

 


End file.
